Blood on the Tracks
by Potter47
Summary: I really don’t know how that got there. It seems rather peculiar for a body to be on top of a train... maybe underneath it, since you know, they get run over all the time, but on top... I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that before.
1. Chapter 1

Blood on the Tracks  
_Potter47_

_I_

From the outside, the Hogwarts Express appeared as something out of a fairy-tale, or a children's story—a great, steaming train marching steadily across the landscape, chugging along the tracks as if it would like nothing more than to reach its destination and be able to have a nice, two-month rest. The way the summer sun shined off the metal, you could have sworn the train wore a merry, sleepy grin.

Perhaps a cloud drifted past at just the wrong time.

The grin was gone from the engine, and its now-featureless face appeared somehow decidedly sad. As if in reaction to this sudden mood swing, the train began to slow down, slow down, slow down with a screeching noise like a great, frustrated grunt. It was giving up, finally—it was just too tired. It needed that rest right now, and it was going to take it.

——

"Why aren't we moving?" Ron asked.

"Dunno," said Harry. He looked to Hermione.

"Well, we must have stopped for some reason."

"No, _really_, Hermione?"

The compartment door slid open, and Neville entered with a Chocolate Frog in one hand and a confused expression on his face.

"We're not moving," he said.

"We realised that," said Ron. "You were out there, any idea why we stopped?"

"No clue."

There was a great screeching noise, and the train lurched suddenly forward—knocking Neville out of his newly reclaimed seat—and then settled back into motionlessness.

"It must've stalled or something," said Hermione. "That felt like the driver was trying to get it going again..."

"Well, that's not good," said Neville. He glanced around. "Where're Luna and Ginny?"

"I thought they were going to the trolley with you," said Harry.

"They did," said Neville, "but I figured they'd be back by now."

"Well, I'm sure they'll be back soon," said Hermione. "You know how Luna is, she probably took Ginny on a search for Train-Stopping-Bangiwhatsits when we stopped..."

"Yeah..."

——

"There've got to be some around here, _someplace_," said Luna, furrowing her pale eyebrows.

"What are we looking for again?" asked Ginny, not really caring and not really caring to go back to the compartment, with Harry...

"Ancheknots," said Luna for the thousandth time, "I told you, they're the natural enemy of the locomotive—"

"But where are they supposed to be? How could they have stopped the train from one of the compartments?"

"Well, Ancheknots are tricky like that," said Luna, sliding open yet another compartment door and poking her head in. She glanced around, and asked of the occupants, "Have any of you seen an Ancheknot anywhere today?"

A puzzled silence met her, and she withdrew her head.

"Honestly, you'd think I was asking whether they'd seen a kangaroo or something..."

A few more compartments passed in much the same fashion—a group of the remaining sixth-year Slytherins reacted particularly unpleasantly—and Ginny was about to ask Luna whether they could go back to the compartment after all, when suddenly Luna seemed to have had an epiphany:

"I've just had an epiphany!" shouted Luna, sliding shut the Slytherins' door—Ginny wondered why she'd felt the need to shout. "An Ancheknot wouldn't set foot inside a train, would it? They're natural enemies..."

"Then we can go back to the compartment, now? They're probably wondering where we are... and with the train stopped, they're probably worried—"

"Of course we can't go back to the compartment, sillyhead," said Luna, "we've come this far, you think I'm not going to find it _now...?_"

"But you said—"

"An Ancheknot wouldn't set foot _inside _a train," said Luna, "so logically, they must do they're magical fiddling from _outside_ the train. From the roof."

Ginny blinked. "Luna, you're crazy, you can't go looking about on the roof of the Hogwarts Express—"

"Why not? It's stopped moving, I wouldn't fall off..."

"But what if it starts again?"

"It won't start until I find the Ancheknot, obviously." She looked at Ginny shrewdly. "Do you _want _to spend forever in that compartment, avoiding Harry's glance for the rest of your days...?"

"Of course not," said Ginny, "but I doubt we'd be stuck here forever—"

"This is no time for doubts," said Luna. "I'm going to find that Ancheknot, if you don't want to come, then you don't have to."

Luna turned tail with a determined expression, and began marching towards the end of the train.

Ginny shook her head, and muttered to herself, "Only you, Luna..."

She quickly caught up with the other girl, and said, "Of course I'm going with you. You think I'd let you go up on the top of a train alone...? What kind of a friend would I be?"

Luna smiled, as they reached the door at the back of the train. "A sensible one."

——

"How long do you think it would take to search for Train-Stopping-Bangiwhatsits?" said Harry, after a while. He stared at the compartment door, as if willing it to open with his mind. _Open, open, and let Ginny walk in, safe and sound... "We were just going to the loo," she might say, and sit down and laugh at him for worrying..._

"I dunno," said Ron, "but I'm starting to get worried."

"Me too," chorused Neville and Hermione, uncoordinated yet at once.

"It couldn't hurt to go look for them," said Harry. "Me and Ron'll search the train, and Hermione, you could look in the loo—Neville can stay here in case they come back."

"So they don't think we've disappeared and start searching for _us _as well," said Ron.

"OK, then," said Hermione. "I'm sure they're perfectly all right... let's go."

——

"It's just like in a film," said Luna, climbing the ladder on the back of the Express, while Ginny waited her turn in the little porch-like end of the train below. "The ladder's in the same place and everything... and that porch would be wonderful for a tea party, don't you think? I'm going to bring some next September, we can sit out here, it'd be fun..."

"Whatever you say, Luna," said Ginny as Luna pulled herself over the top of the ladder and onto the train.

"Well, this is certainly a different perspective on things..." Luna stood up, then, with arms out on both sides for balance. Thankfully the train had stopped in a great, green field, rather than on a bridge. _That _would have been a bit overwhelming.

Ginny started climbing, left foot first and then right, left right left right left and then the top and—

_My God, it's so beautiful..._

Ginny could see that green field was much more than just great from up here—it was _lush_. Stretching as far as the eye could see, there was grass, and a few trees scattered about the land, and it was more beautiful than Ginny could have imagined, from the inside. It looked like something out of a dream. A very, very good dream.

"That settles it," said Luna, "I'm researching sticking charms this summer."

Ginny blinked. "Why?" she asked.

"So I can sit up here next time we ride this thing, without getting blown off. That would be so amazing..."

"It would," said Ginny. She looked up, and saw the great, blue sky above her with the nice kind of clouds, the white ones. She couldn't make out any particular shapes, but it was such an exceptional sight...

"I wonder if anybody's ever come up here before," said Luna. "Students, I mean. We've been missing out for so long..." Then, an abrupt change in her voice, now strictly business: "Now let's find that Ancheknot."

She began walking along the top of the train as though it was something she did every day—the extended arms were less for balance than for her own enjoyment. It was like she was slicing the wind in two.

Ginny stood as well, then, and followed Luna in her trek.

——

Neville waited alone in the compartment, bored and apprehensive. Why had the train stopped? Students had begun to pour into the corridor, to ask each other what had happened and to shrug and say they had no idea. From the look of things through the compartment door, it would be near-impossible for the others to find Luna and Ginny in the crowd.

Where had they gone? Perhaps to talk to the driver... or the loo... but why would they both go to the loo? Did girls like company while going to the toilet? They did seem to congregate in there sometimes, he'd noticed... yes, they must like talking to each other in there, without the worry that boys would overhear.

But why now? When the train's stopped, you'd think you'd be able to hold off the desperate need to ramble about some boy...

It was probably Harry, he wagered... Ginny'd always been nuts about Harry, she probably always would be. He'd thought that maybe she'd get over him when they'd broken up, but it didn't seem likely, what with them congregating in bathrooms to talk about him, and all...

Neville shook his head. Why on earth did he care? Why wasn't _he_ trying to figure out why the train had stopped?

"Maybe it just felt like taking a rest," he mused. He lay his head back against the wall and looked up at the luggage rack, and then the compartment's ceiling.

He wondered how long they'd be stuck. Gran'd probably be angry with _somebody_ over the delay, probably'd start rambling on about how Hogwarts was going to fall to pieces without Dumbledore...

He still couldn't believe Dumbledore was—

"_AHH!_"

Neville's gaze jumped upward again—at some point it had drifted back down to the luggage rack—and he stared at the ceiling. The scream had come from—

Above him?

He stood, and looked out the compartment door—the entire crowd of students were staring, puzzled, at the ceiling, and murmuring amongst themselves.

"Was that a scream?"

"Who was that?"

"On the _roof...?_"

Neville was surprised, then, to see Ron right by his side, a horrified look on his face.

"Nev, that was Ginny. Come on, we've got to find her."

Barely even waiting for Neville to get out the door, Ron continued his march through the crowd of students. Neville followed eagerly, awkwardly, as Ron pushed back and back and back towards the rear of the train.

"Where's Harry?" Neville said.

"I dunno," said Ron. "He was looking on the other half of the train."

It was good to know that their group was essentially completely split up in a time of crisis—Hermione searching the loos, Harry on the other side of the train, and Luna God-knew-where.

"Where are we going? She sounded like she was on the roof or something..."

"Then that's where we're going," said Ron. "There's a ladder on the back of the train, right?"

"I dunno."

"Well, I think there is, and there better be, since that's where we're headed."

In another minute they were at the back door of the train, and just as Ron was about to push it open, a very familiar figure dropped down on the other side of the window.

"Luna?" said Ron, opening the door. "Where's—"

...and beside Luna, dropped Ginny, eyes wide in fear. (Neville supposed Luna's eyes might've been widened as well, but it was more difficult to tell.)

"You're OK!" said Ron, taking hold of his sister. She didn't say anything, and then he stepped back. "You are OK, right?"

She nodded.

"What happened? What were you doing up there?"

"There was a... there was a..."

"We were looking for Ancheknots," supplied Luna calmly. "But we didn't find any."

"Why did you scream, Gin?"

Ginny opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn't quite manage it—Ron turned to Luna.

She informed them:

"There's a Death Eater up there."

Neville's jaw dropped.

"What? The bloody hell..." said Ron, looking upward. "Is he following you? What are you doing out here, we've got to get inside, get help—"

"He isn't following us," said Luna. "It would be quite the trick for him to manage that, what with him being dead and all."

_TBC_


	2. Chapter 2

Blood on the Tracks  
_Potter47_

_II_

"I really don't know how that got there," mused Luna, looking as the rest of them were, at the body laying on the floor. "It seems rather peculiar for a body to be on top of a train... maybe underneath it, since you know, they get run over all the time, but on top... I don't think I've ever heard of that before."

It had been brought down from the roof, and laid in one of the last compartments, toward the back of the train. The prefects had attempted to take hold of the situation, and were now standing outside the door and trying to persuade the students back into their compartments.

"Everyone _remain calm._"

"Yeah," said Theodore Nott, at the front of the pack of students. "Nothing to worry about—not like a _dead body fell out of the sky _or anything," he said sarcastically. He didn't seem very sure of himself, however.

Neville understood his uncertainness—it must have been obvious to everybody who'd seen the body brought in that it was wearing Death Eater robes. Nott was probably worried that it was his own father under that silver mask.

...and that led the compartment's occupants to their current predicament. They wanted to unmask the body—but nobody wanted to be the one to do it.

Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Neville were crowded into the compartment with some of the other prefects—those whom had been closest, and had gotten there first.

Hermione, as the senior prefect in the compartment, took charge:

"Harry, why don't you do it? You have the most experience with this sort of thing..."

Harry sighed, and glanced down at the silver-masked figure sprawled on the floor between them. "Fine," he said, and reached down, peeled the mask away—

"Who the hell is that?" Ron asked.

It was what everyone was thinking, Neville was sure—the Death Eater was no one they at all recognised, not even the slightest bit.

"I've never seen him before," said Harry. "Not even in any of the... well." He gestured towards his scar.

"Maybe he's a new recruit," said Ginny.

"_Was,_" supplied Luna.

"Maybe he _was _a new recruit."

"Hate to think what he did to get You-Know-Who angry enough to drop him onto a train," said Ron. He winced. "I mean, what a way to go..."

"I doubt it's as simple as that," said Hermione. "Why would Voldemort have dropped someone on the train? He has simpler ways of killing people..."

"And why did the train stop?" asked Neville, speaking up for the first time.

The others fell silent.

"That's a good question," said Harry.

"There's no such thing as a bad question," said Luna. "Only bad questioneers."

"Questioners," corrected Hermione.

"No, questioneers. It sounds better."

"Heh. She's got you there, Hermione," said Ron.

"That's hardly important right now," said Hermione, back-to-business. "We have a dead Death Eater, a stopped train, and a school's worth of soon-to-be-hysterical students to deal with..."

"This's going to be a fun train ride home."

——

Harry was looking for clues.

Actually, Neville reasoned, Hermione was looking for clues, but she had dragged Harry along with her because the crowd fully expected him to be figuring out what was going on all by himself. He was the Chosen One, after all, the Boy-Who-Lived—_he _should be the one to figure out why the Death Eater couldn't say the same.

Ron had followed, which seemed only natural to Neville—where Harry and Hermione went, where a mystery was involved, Ron always went too.

Neville, Ginny, and Luna remained in the compartment. With the Death Eater.

Neville tried to keep his gaze off the body, but then he ended up looking at Ginny. And when he tried to keep his gaze off Ginny, he ended up looking at the body and wondering why he was looking at Ginny so much.

"I wonder who he was," said Luna. Luna, alone among the group, seemed largely unperturbed by the whole fiasco. She looked at the body curiously, as if it had merely been very rude in plopping down asleep on their compartment floor.

"Me too," said Neville. "I thought there were enough Death Eaters all ready, without adding more we didn't know about..."

"No," said Luna. "That's not what I meant. I meant, I wonder who he _was_. Like, what sort of a person he was. Where he lived, if he was married, if he had a family, that sort of thing. What life was like to him."

"Too short, I'd wager," said Ginny.

There came a sudden rapping on the door of the compartment. Neville jumped.

The door slid open, and there stood Theodore Nott, of all people. He looked troubled, and he had his hands in his robe pockets.

"I, um. I was wondering, if..." He seemed to be having trouble with his words, which was oddly out of character for the Slytherin.

Luna looked at him compassionately. "Don't worry," she said, "it's not him."

Nott looked at Luna strangely for a moment, and then he nodded. "Thank you," he said, voice still a bit too wavery. Another moment of that strange looking-at-Luna, and then Nott departed without another word.

"Wow," said Ginny. "I can't believe he actually came to ask... Malfoy never would've done that."

"Yeah..." said Neville. "I don't think Malfoy would've even cared if it was his father very much—"

"He must've been so worried," said Luna suddenly. "We should've thought to tell him before."

"Half of Slytherin probably has the same right to worry, though—" said Ginny.

"True..."

There was a sort of odd respect in the air for Nott—the son of a Death Eater, yes, but an altogether human one.

——

"There's nothing up here," said Ron.

"We've barely started looking, Ron. There're loads of places we might find evidence—"

"Hermione, we're on the _top of a train..._ how many places could there be?"

"Well... where was the body found?"

"I don't remember... like halfway down?"

"Then we should probably look there, don't you think...?"

They moved along the train, and just as Ron started to say, "I'd say it was about here," there came a voice behind them they hadn't expected.

"I couldn't stand waiting in there," said Luna. "It's so stuffy, especially with Mr Darwin Eckersly on the floor and all—"

"Who?"

"Darwin—the Death Eater. I decided to name him, since we don't know his name and it's a bit more polite than 'the dead body.'"

"Ah," said Harry.

"You're barmy, Luna," said Ron, shaking his head and grinning slightly.

"You say that like it's good thing," said Hermione quietly.

"Well, anyway, it's so beautiful up here, it seemed silly to stay in the compartment... Neville and Ginny are perfectly capable of looking after Darwin, since he doesn't really need much looking after..."

And so, Luna plopped herself down on the roof and looked out over the land.

"What a way to watch the sunset... I should get Colin's camera."

Hermione took to ignoring their new visitor, and decided to keep looking for some shred of a clue that would explain what had happened with the Death Eater—with _Darwin_.

——

Neville was even less sure what to look at now that Luna had left, so he decided to stare at the luggage rack. It made him realise that he'd left Trevor in the other compartment, and he hoped he'd be able to find the toad before they reached the station... but then, that didn't seem like it would happen any time soon.

He looked down at the body. It's face was covered in the silver Death Eater mask again—someone must have decided it was less disturbing that way, and covered up the face once more.

"Why's it so quiet in here?" said Ginny suddenly. "We should talk, it wouldn't be so weird that way."

"...OK."

"How are you, Neville?"

"I'm... I dunno. I've been better... I've had better train rides, that's for sure..."

Ginny smiled. She had a nice smile.

He added, "How about you? How are you?"

"I'm... well, I've been better as well, obviously. I think I'm still in recovery from seeing _him_..."

Neville blinked. "Oh, the... the body, you mean, seeing the body—"

"Yes, of course. What else would I have meant?"

Neville shook his head, attempting a small laugh. "Who knows? I'm a bit slow, if you hadn't noticed..."

Ginny frowned. "You're not slow, Neville."

"Yeah... I am. Just ask Gran—"

"No, you're _not. _I promise. The Neville _I_ know isn't slow at all. He's sweet, and kind, and while not the greatest dancer the world has seen—" Neville smiled, blushing a bit, "—still one of the nicest kids in Hogwarts. And one of the most capable."

Neville had to look away from her, again. Ginny Weasley was complimenting _him..._ but at the same time, the manner of compliment was apparent in every word. She was encouraging him, as a _friend. _That was all she ever would be doing. He didn't really know why that felt so weird to think about.

"Thanks," he said. "You're out of your tree if you think I'm capable, but still... thanks."

Ginny smiled, again. "I hang around with Luna, Neville—I never was in my tree."

——

"There's nothing here," said Hermione.

"I told you," said Ron.

"I was thinking, though," said Hermione, "I doubt he really got here by falling from the sky. He must've been put here by someone on the ground, and maybe _they_ stopped the train..."

"That makes sense," said Harry. "We should look on the ground, then—"

"No," said Luna. She hadn't said a word in a long time, but she said this one fervently. "You shouldn't."

"Why not?" said Hermione.

"There must be evidence up here," Luna said, although she didn't sound very convincing. "You can't look on the ground."

"There's nothing up here. The ground makes sense," said Hermione, and she began walking past Luna.

"You can't look on the ground, or the Ancheknots will get you—"

"Luna," said Ron, "this really isn't the time. He began walking with Hermione, as Luna stood up.

"You can't look on the ground," she said, drawing her wand from her robes, "...or _I'll _get you."

——

"So what do you think happened?" said Ginny. "I mean, with _him._"

"I really don't have any idea... it seems to me he must've fallen from the sky, but I don't know why—"

Neville thought a moment, shook his head when he couldn't think of anything plausible, and asked, "What do you think?"

"Well..."

——

"What? Luna, what are you doing?"

"I'm aiming my wand at you, Ronald. And I'm going to Curse you if you take another step, that's what I'm doing."

Ron's jaw dropped. "_You_ did it...? You killed that Death Eater?"

"That's absurd," murmured Hermione, thinking fervently. "She couldn't have..."

Luna didn't say anything.

Hermione seemed to have an idea.

"Look! A Crumple-Horned Snorkack, behind you!"

Luna didn't react.

Hermione seemed to have expected as much.

"Now," said Luna, "we're all going to go back inside..."

Hermione whispered, "It's Imperius. Curse her, Harry."

Harry blinked, and then nodded, slid his hand into his pocket, and—

"What are you doing?" said Luna, seeing Harry's hand disappear. "I don't think so. Don't pull that hand out, or you'll be in trouble—"

Suddenly, Luna was dangling in the air by her ankle.

In the disorientation, Hermione quickly cast a Stunning Spell, and Harry muttered "_Liberacorpus._"

"Once again," said Ron, almost gloating, "that old book came in handy."

"Let's not forget whose book it was," said Harry, and he shivered as though in self-revulsion.

"Why would someone Imperio Luna?" said Hermione, turning back to the matter at hand. "Who could have done it?"

"I don't know," said Harry, "but they didn't want us looking on the ground, so there must be something down there."

——

"To be honest, I don't really have much of an idea either," said Ginny. "But I think... well, it seems to me that whoever put that body up there wanted someone to find it. I don't really know how they could have expected someone to look on the roof, but I doubt You-Know-Who was just disposing of his Death Eater and decided 'Hmm, this seems a nice place to drop one...'"

"Yeah," said Neville. "It is kinda odd, when you think about it. I mean, the train stopped, first of all... nobody _could _have looked on top of the train if it was still moving. And then... wait. Why did you go up there in the first place?"

"Luna was looking for Ancheknots," said Ginny. She smirked. "The 'natural enemy of locomotives.'"

Ginny's smirk faded away in a moment. She recalled: "She was looking in all the compartments, and then... then she suddenly decided it _had _to be on the roof..."

Ginny's eyes widened. "Do you think she might've been Cursed? I mean, to make her to look there? And then, that would mean that somebody else is on the train—_oh!_"

Neville wondered why she had said "oh," but then he realised—it wasn't the "Eureka!" kind of "oh"—it was the "I wasn't expecting that" kind of "oh," the kind one said when they were struck in the stomach with an invisible spell.

In a moment, Ginny fell back in her seat, Stunned.

——

"Look at this!" said Ron. "There's a broom right in this grass—do you think somebody threw it off the train?"

Harry thought a moment. "Maybe _he _did, the Death Eater—"

"Darwin?"

"Shut up. Do you think he could have killed _himself_, up there?"

"Maybe," said Ron. "Doesn't really explain the train stopping, though, or why the heck he would've flown to the top of a train before doing the deed..."

"He didn't kill himself," said Hermione suddenly.

"Then who did?" Ron asked, turning to where she was standing, several feet away.

She held up an empty bottle, which looked to have held a potion. "Nobody did."

——

Neville's eyes were wider than they'd ever been—what had happened? How had Ginny just... just... collapsed? Like she'd been Cursed, but... but who would have Cursed her?

He looked over to the compartment door, pulled the shade back and looked outside—nobody was out there, just the prefects keeping the other students from looking in. It couldn't have been one of them, could it? _They_ weren't looking in, they were facing the other way and talking nervously to each other. They hadn't noticed anything else had happened...

But then what _had _happened? How had Ginny... how had she... Neville was _alone_, who could have—

And then his eyes widened even further than they had before.

He _wasn't _alone.

The body wasn't just a body anymore—it was a person, standing tall in black robes, silver mask gleaming. A Death Eater. Neville grasped for his wand, in his robes, but the Death Eater pointed its own wand at it, and summoned it before he'd even had a proper grasp.

Then he pointed at the door, murmured a locking charm—some other charm, and the windows were blocked completely—

And Neville was trapped.

——

Ron rammed himself against the compartment door, a bit foolishly so that his shoulder would very much hurt. "GINNY!" he called. "NEVILLE!"

"_Alohomora_," said Hermione. She tried the door again. It was still locked. She began a more complicated unlocking spell...

Harry had joined Ron in the battering of the door. "GINNY! Please be OK..."

"They're trapped in there with a live Death Eater, how do you expect them to be OK?"

"They can defend themselves," said Harry. "That's what the DA was for..."

"Ginny's just a kid, how's she supposed—"

"Will you two just shut up?" demanded Hermione. "I have to start again, you're distracting me... and throwing yourself at the door like that isn't going to accomplish anything."

"Sorry," they said, and backed away from the door—from Ron's face there was nothing he would have liked more than one more good ram, which surely would have opened it _this time..._

Hermione started murmuring her spell again...

——

The Death Eater, then, did something entirely unexpected.

He lowered his wand.

Neville blinked.

In a graceful motion, the silver mask had been divested, and Neville's jaw dropped.

"_Wha... wha... wha... no..._"

There—in long black robes, silver mask at his side, and odd smirk upon his face—stood Neville's greatest fear.

"Hello, Longbottom."

"_Snape..._"

"It's been awhile, hasn't it? No time for catch-up." The smirk was gone, replaced by a look of utter seriousness. "This is very important, Longbottom, I need you to listen—"

_Listen...?_ _How could he listen...?_

Before Neville even knew what he was doing, he had let out a grunt of rage and—was it really _him _doing these actions, it didn't feel like it—launched himself at his former professor.

This attack knocked Snape off balance a bit—but nothing more, and he had soon recovered, grasping Neville tightly by the arms.

"Fool, Longbottom! You have to trust me. There's no time to explain why I'm not killing you this very moment, but it should be enough to know that I'm _not _killing you, for you to believe that the two of us are on the same side."

"But—but—you killed _Dumbledore_—"

"I cannot explain that today, Longbottom. But _listen _to me, for once in your life, pay attention to these instructions and don't bungle it up.

"I'm here on a mission from the Dark Lord—I was to infiltrate this train, capture Potter, and in a 'blaze of glory' for Lord Voldemort, make sure the Hogwarts Express never ran again. I was to pretend to be dead, to be brought inside—oh, get that blank look off your face, Longbottom."

"Bu—how?"

"The Draught of Living Death, along with a bit of Polyjuice to obscure my identity—" He sounded very proud that his beloved potions had done their job.

"Weasley was right—the Dark Lord assigned Theodore Nott to find someone on the train to Curse, and to force them to look on the roof."

_Nott...? _thought Neville. But then that meant that Nott's worry for his father had been an act... Neville felt infuriated that they'd fallen for it. _I told Ginny I was slow..._

"Then, when I had been brought inside, Nott was to awaken me with a nonverbal counterspell to the potion—which he did."

"But why?" said Neville, and he was suddenly overwhelmed by the distinctly unwelcome knowledge that he was speaking to not only his least favourite person in the world, but to the man who killed Dumbledore—how could he still be on the Order's side if he'd...

"I was to wait for my chance, and strike Potter when he least expected it. I told you, my task is to bring Potter to the Dark Lord."

"But you can't—"

"I _know_ I can't, Longbottom, _listen_ to me. Potter is not ready to face the Dark Lord, he needs more time. And so this plan _must_ fail. There are two ways for it to fail—for me to be killed, or for me to be captured."

He smirked. "That's your choice."

"Wha...?"

"You either have to capture me, or to kill me. It's not that difficult to comprehend."

"Ca—captured," said Neville. As much as he hated Snape, he knew he couldn't _kill_ him... Even if he killed Dumbledore...

"I thought so. And that is why I came to you—I could have chosen Weasley, and many would have found it more likely she could manage it. But you are my perfect downfall, Longbottom. You're the one I would overlook."

"Good... to know..."

Snape smirked, again, handed Neville back his wand, and said: "Stupefy me, then, and conjure ropes to bind me. It'll be just like your dreams."

"_Stup—!_"

"Wait." Snape made a complicated gesture with his wand. With a jolt, the train started to inch forward again on its tracks. He turned to Ginny, and whispered "_Ennervate." _She began to stir.

He turned back to Neville. "Go ahead."

"_Stupefy!_"

——

Just as Snape's body collapsed to the ground, Ginny's eyes opened. She blinked a few times.

"Neville?" she said. "What happened?" She looked round. "Did I fall asleep? Why did you move the Death—_is that Snape?_"

"Um... yeah. He Stupefied you."

"He's alive?"

"Yeah... I guess there's some stuff to explain..."

He did so, and when he reached the end, Ginny was grinning.

"See, Neville? I _told _you you were capable."

"But... he told me to Stun him..."

"Not just in Stunning him... you did what needed to be done." She smiled, and kissed him on the cheek.

He grinned rather sheepishly. "I guess..."

He knew it hadn't meant anything—that she only thought of him as a friend. But somehow, he didn't mind. The way she was talking about him... maybe he wasn't so bad after all. Maybe... _someone, _someday, might think differently.

The compartment door burst open, then, and Neville suddenly remembered his surroundings, what had happened, everything...

_Nott..._

"Ginny!" said Ron and Harry, together.

"Thank goodness you're OK," said Hermione. Harry sat down next to Ginny and hugged her tightly, whispering something. Neville smiled.

"What happened?" asked Ron.

"Professor Snape! What ha—is he dead?"

"No... I'll explain everything afterwards, but you have to find Nott. He's a Death Eater... he cursed Luna... Where is Luna?"

"She's out here, she's Stunned."

"Harry, let's find Nott," said Ron. "Harry?"

Harry didn't seem very intent on letting Ginny go any time soon. And she didn't seem to mind. _Broken up, indeed..._

Neville stood: "I'll go instead."

——

From the outside, the Hogwarts Express appeared as something out of a fairy-tale, or a children's story—a great, steaming train marching steadily across the landscape, chugging along the tracks as if it would like nothing in the world. It had missed this feeling, this gathering of speed. It loved it.

The way the summer sun shined off the metal, you could have sworn the train wore a merry, sleepy grin.

_Fin_

Author's note: You may have noticed a difference between this and the other entries of the challenge (although I haven't managed to read all of them, yet, so I don't know if anyone else did this as well): not all of the required five clues were written for the characters—many were written for you. They should be quite apparent on a second read through, and indeed, there are more than five of them. This is not against the rules of the challenge, for they state only that "there shall be five clues," not "for the characters to figure out."

I hope you enjoyed this story—as you can see, I cut it rather close on the deadline. The ideas weren't coming very well for this challenge, even though I loved it the moment I read it. I'd written a chapter of my novel-length called "Murder on the Hogwarts Express"—this was the type of challenge I've dreamed of, and now that it came I couldn't think of a story for the life of me. (Although I suppose it makes sense; I've been rather busy lately...)

When the story _did _finally come, it was one of those things you just don't want to stop writing—I wrote well past midnight the last few nights on this story, something I haven't done in a long, long while. I really enjoyed it, and I was honestly very worried I might not finish in time. Thankfully I did. :) And hopefully, you've enjoyed it as well. :)


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